Sports flooring systems offer various designs including rigid construction providing little or no resilience, as well as highly resilient shock absorbing cushioned floors. Sports flooring systems include the option of anchorage methods to attach to a supporting substrate, which is most commonly concrete. Many sports flooring system designs also float freely with no anchorage attachment to the supporting substrate.
Examples of anchored sports flooring systems that provide little or no resiliency are exemplified in designs disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,518,800 to Tank et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 3,566,569 to Coke et al. The Tank patent discloses a construction method wherein a steel channel is anchored to the supporting substrate and specially manufactured metal clips are used to secure flooring boards to the steel channels. The Coke patent discloses a construction method wherein wooden nailing strips are anchored to the supporting substrate and flooring boards are attached to the nailing strips by stapling or nailing.
Designs disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,369,710 to Peterson et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,369,710 to Randjelovic et al. demonstrate widely used floating sports flooring system construction. The designs disclosed in both of these patents include resilient components resting on a supporting substrate which in turn supports a wooden sub-floor and flooring surface.
Sub-floor panels are also known to be manufactured of moldable material such as plastic or polyethylene. The design of such panels includes tongue and groove edges formed to interlock panels into a monolithic surface, which serves to support a flooring surface. Flooring material such as tongue and groove flooring is directly attached to the interlocking panels by means of mechanical fasteners such as staples or cleats. The underside of such panels can include cavity spaces in which resilient pads such as those previously described in the Peterson and Randjelovic patents are placed.
Another sub-floor assembly design is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,413 to Counihan et al. which includes a wooden panel sub-floor supported with resilient components. The design illustrated in the Counihan patent includes arranged plywood sub-floor panels and a means to restrain the flooring system by incorporating steel channels attached to the supporting substrate. U.S. Pat. No. 4,856,250 to Gronau et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 6,122,873 et al. to Randjelovic further demonstrate designs incorporating various wooden sub-floor and resilient components. These three referenced patents illustrate various methods to provide flooring systems with stability by means of substrate attachment while also providing resilient components for wanted shock absorbency.
These referenced patents and designs, which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety, are examples of the known range of sub-floor constructions available and in use in the sports floor industry.